Grief (an acrostic poem)

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Going to strain carrying the emotional weight of the moment

Release is not an option, at least not yet.

It is the necessary work that must be done

Even if it leaves you crippled for the rest of your life

For without completing the arduous task, there is no finding catharsis

Expiry (an acrostic poem)

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Everything has a time and a place.

X in certain spots, O in others.

Putting them together correctly is a path to victory.

If done poorly, the dreaded line of defeat would be drawn.

Reaching for his pencil we finally wrote an X on the upper left corner.

Yet he waited too long and his 3-year-old gave up and looked for someone else to play with.

Noodles (an acrostic poem)

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Nothing like slurping down long lines of flavor.

Or when they are all done, sipping the tasty broth that was left behind.

Oh, how his tummy felt nice and full when he was done.

Didn’t care if the base was chicken or beef or vegetable or fish.

Look, as long as those tender, slightly chewy, lengths of pasta were drenched in it, he was happy.

Especially with a bit of a spicy kick to make sure his tastebuds would wake up.

So when he was asked what he wanted for lunch, his obvious reply was…

Year (an acrostic poem)

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You all said it couldn’t be done.

Every single one of you bet against me.

And now here we are, 365 days later, and what do you have to say now?

Really?  Told you so?  I thought you might have a bit more sympathy since I failed so miserably

Mess (an acrostic poem)

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Making things usually left his desk a little cluttered, and he loved to make stuff

Everything started within reach, but by the end, some of creative debris was in the other room

Someday he would learn to put everything back in its place when he was done with it

Still, he thought of his whole experience in terms of his need to be creative, not that the output was a chaotic…

Novel (an acrostic poem)

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No way he would ever get all those words down on paper

Obviously, he had bitten off more than he could chew

Vowing that after he was done he would never even touch a word processor

Every letter was a struggle as he tried to download his soul onto the paper

Long months later he typed ‘The End.’  That was when he realized his work had just begun!

Gears (an acrostic poem)

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Getting her teenager to work around the house was always a chore

Every day they would go round and round each other, grinding away

And eventually, it would torque the two of them right off and nothing would get done

Reaching into her emergency chocolate stash she wondered how she could lubricate the situation

She ended up giving them a peace offering from her stash and that allowed the two of them to switch …

Review (an acrostic poem)

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Reading books was always a chore for Melonie

Every page was a struggle for survival with respect to staying awake

Viewing the text made the words devolve into scribbles

It was enough to give her a migraine just thinking about it

Even the pages would cut the wafer-thin skin of her fingertips

When she finally was done, it was all worth it when she left a one-star …

Drain (an acrostic poem)

Didn’t have any time to recharge, so down went another bottle of caffeine and sugar

Really, sleep was in order, demanded even, but she ignored it

As she had too much to do and way too little time to get it all done

It would have made her cry, except after fifteen years of doing this, this was normal

Now if she had only believed her mother before she had become a mother herself…

Quest (an acrostic poem)

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Quitting the task had never crossed his mind

Unless you counted when he woke up, most of the time during the day, and just before sleeping

Every moment he thought about stopping he somehow found the will to finish it

So when that music in his head announced he was finally done, he let out a sigh of relief

That was short-lived since he realized all he had been doing was just a side…